I finally won't have to raid to endgame!Follow

Sounds like another reason why static groups are important. If you weren't in a static and attempted these raids weekly in PUGs, you might end up with players who were unlucky with drops one week and players who were showered with them the next. If you run a static at least you know that all of the drops are going toward advancing you past each subsequent boss.

You may or may not be getting the DPS gear you need for that next DPS check boss, but I think at least part of that is devs enforcing a limit on progress. Content needs to keep your attention at least a majority of the time it's released prior to the following content update. It could be that mechanic, it could be bad luck with drop types, it could be improper strategy or a combination of all of the above. It's probably harder to tell in XIV as I don't think players have access to the raw data for their encounters; at least not to the degree it's been seen in other games.

Yeah, that's basically it.

FFXIV players like raiding, just not the hardcore raids as they've been designed for this game. I'd like for hardcore raids to be a little less punishing and not so reliant on clearing DPS checks.

In FFXIV, the MO seems to be, "Do X amount of damage to these ads in 1 minute or EVERYONE DIES."

In FFXI, the MO seemed to be, "Kill these ads as quickly as possible or they'll mess your rhythm and everyone will probably die... although if you are skilled, you may be able to extend the fight and overcome weaknesses within your party."

I like the XI philosophy better.

In the meantime, this becomes much less of an issue with multiple endgame avenues installed in the game. As Hyrist said, rather than chase the more guaranteed carrots in raids, people can choose to gamble with RNG in Exploratory Missions or whatever other types of endgame SE creates later on. Sure, there may be some hardcore raiders who are upset over no longer getting early access to the best gear, but they'll still have the advantage of being able to get top-level gear for multiple jobs twice as quickly as non-raiders.

I, too, am thrilled I won't have to raid to experience endgame in XIV!

And there's so much more room for improvising! Like when we were killing adds in those two hallways in that last boss fight we did... one of those adepts on the other side kept moving out to the ledge where you guys couldn't see him... so I was inching out between waves on our side and gunning him down when I could. Or when I died down below, and someone else slid over to cover my side. That kind of stuff is what I loved about XI's best battles, and it is what is often missing from XIV.

No, I'm certain I was responding to Thayos about something that he said himself....


Going to preface by saying that I totally agree with the addition of varied content. The issue I find with this is that it doesn't go along with progression. I don't really think it would require changing the current structure anyway. Just add the alternatives and leave the hardcore content for those who enjoy it. Regardless, progression should remain as is.

Step 1 > Step 2 > Step 3

You could allow for splits in the path, but it would still have to maintain the progressive structure. Maybe something like this...

Step 1 > Step 2a or 2b > Step 3a or 3b (The a parts being alternate content comparable to higher tier raids and b parts being the actual hardcore raids)

Either way, the gear rewards for completing hardcore content are meant to further your progression into more difficult hardcore content. If the 'a' steps existed then the case being made for 'I want top tier gear without having to raid' might become more realistic. As it stands now, it's just something you would wear to make barely challenging content completely trivial.


Couple things here...

1) /holds up a mirror for Thayos and points at the discussion with Hio about FFXI

2) Due to the nature of XI mechanics and it's UI, battles tended to be more based on actively mitigating danger(either through maintaining defensive buffs, healing rotations, stun rotations, positioning, any combination of any or all of these, ect) or reacting to situations. I honestly feel that getting a bright, colorful indicator on your screen prior to a devastating attack is much easier to handle than a 2 second window to read what is happening/happened via the chat log and react in that 2 second window(or have a few seconds to react just after it).

I think the only thing that made XI encounters easier was the ability to 'zombie' mobs to death. That was only a viable strategy because you could throw anywhere from one to several alliances of 18 players(each) at the content.

3) If you can't be bothered to take the time to round up 7 other players for a raid, how would it make you feel better to find 17 or even 23?

That said, I like the XI philosophy better myself. I've also been here for 5 years now making the case that SE should have just continued to support and improve that game. Maybe you don't get the initial 'holy **** a new MMO gimmie gimmie' rush that a new game gets, but it was and is still their most profitable game ever. I don't think it's coincidental that it started to fade at precisely the time that they shifted their resources into developing XIV and stopped supporting it.



Edited, Nov 6th 2015 6:54pm by FilthMcNasty

Edited, Nov 6th 2015 6:57pm by FilthMcNasty

Another thing that made XI encounters "easier" (although I prefer to say "more fluid," because doing this actually required skill) was kiting. There aren't really any options for kiting in XIV like there were in XI, and as a red mage, I saved my party's bacon many times by being the ultimate distraction until others could regroup.

Also, the problem I have isn't with setting aside time for gaming... the problem I have is setting aside time for gaming with very little chance of actual progress. When I think of big, endgame raids, my brain always goes to Dynamis. You'd set an event date/time, people show up, and you run it. It always required coordination whether you had the bare minimum or an overkill maximum. And if Joe Blow can't show up one day because his wife wants to go see a play, then no biggie... one dude not showing up doesn't bring the whole operation grinding to a halt (which is the case with FFXIV's raid static parties).

Edited, Nov 6th 2015 4:27pm by Thayos

This is from some of the 3.1 notes:

Alexander

- By the end of October, around half of active players have cleared Alex Normal.
- Savage clear numbers are lower than expected.
- They will keep an eye on clear numbers and if needed perform adjustments for Savage on 3.15.
- For the next Alexander on 3.2, it'll probably not use the same Normal/Savage division.
- Yoshida ideally wants to implement Easy/Medium/Savage three- tiered difficulties, but on the other hand they are lacking the staff to implement that much.
- Yoshida wants to implement a cross-world, raid-only, party finder system. However, it is still only an idea he have and no real work has been done on it.

Least there's talks going on about making some adjustments, but it sounds like most changes are quite far away (if at all happening).

I think it was definitely cheating when talking about things like that AV exploit.

Otherwise, when simply using spells such as gravity/bind/shadows/stoneskin -- and macroing in +movement speed gear for good measure -- that wasn't cheating at all. Kiting was a great tool for parties that didn't fit the mold of what players often deemed accessible. Case in point... my CoP static kited a TON with a lineup of (taru) nin, thief, rdm, rdm, whm, bst. We had a few fights cleared with just a minute or two left on the 30-min timer, and we probably had to work a lot harder than people who won in like eight minutes... but we had skill, and we were able to use our party lineup/abilities to our advantage, as any great battle system should allow you to do.



Yeah, three nights per week of regularly-scheduled raiding... that's a no-go. Way too much of a time commitment in a game that's otherwise very manageable to play. I already have my raid night, and I go to the gym (or run outside) every day. I work until 5 p.m. weekdays, and then one night a week I usually cover a sporting event for the local newspaper. Then I also get freelance work. Then there's the wife, and I kind of like to see her sometimes... and we also have friends, who I like to see.

But that's really beside the point. I could give a static one night/week for a couple of hours if it were late enough to not interfere with more important things that regularly come up. That's actually what my previous static did... we ran from like 9 to 11 p.m pst. Everyone in my static was in the same situation as me... too busy adulting to be able to commit to several nights per week, so we picked just one late night per week to get things done (and we'd go other nights when most of us were online). Sadly, it was still a failure, because we never did beat T9 even after a few months of action.



Dynamis does come to mind because it's an example of how hardcore endgame content can be implemented without harsh restrictions on players (which forms an exclusionary community that relies almost completely on "git gud" statics).

Again, this is why I'm excited about the hard explorations; it's an endgame event that uses the same participation concepts. Now, people who can't commit to weekly statics will have a less schedule-intensive form of progression, which is awesome!



I agree with this. FFXIV want to raid, and they want to do endgame. But so far, SE has not yet designed a "hard" raid with a level of difficulty that most players find worthwhile. There shouldn't be such a huge gap between the number of people who've been successful in NM vs. being successful in SM, unless there was a middle tier that was regarded as the "normal" progression tier. It's very bad design when the progression-oriented raid has a completion rate of like 1 percent.

No, just no. Those stupid lights were insanely annoying in FFXI Abyssea and Voidwatch, and I never want to see them again. Boss fights should be about killing the boss, period. Let the inventiveness be in the ways to achieve that with different mixes, not "DPS go twiddle your thumbs for 10 minutes while the healers try to trigger Red on it" or whatever.

In case I wasn't clear: I NEVER WANT TO SEE THOSE STUPID LIGHTS EVER AGAIN. (Yes, I'm shouting.)

(And you know that's exactly how SE would do that.)


This. Please this.


Neither. Because this hits the nail exactly on the head with Thor's hammer:


That's not an easy or difficult fight. It's square dancing with no caller.

I don't think it was intended that players could literally just walk away from mobs attacks. There was a reason they added increased movement speed and complete gravity resist to some of the more difficult mobs.


Half the population(including players who never even made attempts) cleared Alex normal. 6-9 hours a week isn't a stretch for your typical player who is interested in raiding. Hell even if we didn't know that half the population was interested, the census numbers alone show that players are willing to put at least that much time into the game weekly, regardless of what they choose to spend it doing.


You're countering your own point. Do you not remember that dynamis took several hours a day for a few days a week? That is exactly the reason you said 'no-go' to raiding. It's OK but it's not OK? Which is it?

Aside from that, dynamis wasn't difficult. It was literally several hours of trash. It didn't start to become difficult until the extra zones were added with accessories. Some people would call DL difficult, but it was mostly just crossing your fingers and praying to the RNG gods that you didn't get gibbed immediately. This is coming from someone who enjoyed dynamis and participated regularly for a decade.

If you're forced to be casual, you'd probably rather see something like the idea I mentioned earlier with BC/KS/E/ZNM style fights. A single encounter against a boss on an abbreviated timer. You would have limited access to it since it would still have to remain supplementary to raiding, but it's far more accessible to players like yourself who can't/don't want to commit to a few hours at a time.

Filth, you missed one of my main points. It is not the hours played per week that is problematic with xiv's endgame. Rather, it is the requirement to play set hours that is unmanageable for many adult gamers.

I easily play 10 hours/week across various games. But some weeks, it is mostly on weekends. Other weeks, it is spread out.

Dynamis didn't require a static-like commitment. If you had time to play, you just showed up... And in the meantime, your busy schedule wouldn't hamper the rest of the group.

That is exactly what I said above... That IS my point about how xiv's endgame could stand to take a page from dynamis.

Also, with kiting, I think over time the devs just realized they didn't want certain mobs to be kited. Ninja blink tanking was probably more of a cheat than kiting over was. I mean, SE did put gravity, bind and sleep in the game. Kiting is just a form of mob management, and it carried its risks... Bad kiters never did anyone much good.

Edited, Nov 8th 2015 1:52am by Thayos

Edited, Nov 8th 2015 1:53am by Thayos

Oh I agree, Dynamis was easier when people showed up consistently and in large numbers. The fact that one or two people didn't show up though? You still ran the event and walked away with currency and AF gear. FFXIV, 2 people say they're not showing up? You're done unless you find reps. Then who knows what you're getting with those reps.

Most things in XI ran that way, Sky, Sea, Dynamis, etc. I was one of the more casual players who couldn't always commit to the schedule. Never got kicked, just took me forever to get my items with the point system. I eventually got my Byakko's Haidate, my Osode, and whatever junk I wanted from Dynamis (mostly Bst gear). People not showing up in XI didn't kill a shell because there was usually that core of members. Members not showing up in XIV has now killed 4 of my statics, so I just gave up entirely on bothering with it in XIV. Most leaders in XI were pretty good at letting you know well in advance: This particular night, we're going for all the Sky Gods, or the Shadow Lord or whatever and people showed up in droves.

Obviously, if you ran one of the shells, ya, the work was 10x more then just showing up to participate. I'm sure as a leader it was frustrating to no end having members like me just show up once a week or every 2 weeks. It still worked out in the end though. As the game evolved, farming parties became smaller and smaller which was good.

The reason I'm saying this comparison isn't valid is because that core of people clearing dynamis while other people were taking care of other things... that dynamis core was still a larger group of people committing to being there than you require for a raid in XIV. I guess I'm just unsure how people figure that you could find a core group of 30+ players to commit more (or just as) easily than just finding 7 for the same purpose? You are still falling back on the same players who can make it to 8/10 runs a month.

People don't leave statics because they have other responsibilities. Responsible players realize that they can't make the commitment and they don't join statics. It's not optional.

If you were to go back and dig through all those old dynamis websites, you'd find one thing in common among nearly all of them...

The disclaimer that says "If our schedule doesn't suit you, please look elsewhere for something better suited to your needs. If our rules are not to your liking, please look elsewhere for something better suited to your needs. If you are OK with both of those, please submit an application for review and [guild officer name here] will be in touch with you soon. Thanks".

Bottom line: If you don't have the time to commit to raiding then you just don't. If you do, all you really need to consider is how much you want it. If you want it enough then you'll make it happen. Somewhere, someone with more responsibility than all of us is making it work because it's something they enjoy doing. If it's not something you enjoy, don't pin it with being poorly designed because it doesn't cater to your personal schedule. That leg is far too weak to stand on

I get what Filth is saying in terms of that core of 20-30 with the initial Dynamis runs. It's a lot of people vs the 8 needed in XIV, that being said, all content in XI was for long term durability. If it's all XIV had, all of these small statics would combine to get you your core of 20-30 people, and you could have those more casual people come and go. It's already an issue in XIV with bigger FCs. 3 teams of 8, have two extra guys, sorry, you two are sol unless you get a static elsewhere. I just think similar content would lead to all these hardcore statics to band together and form larger groups.

The only low man content that required statics in XI was what? Assault, CoP (I'm sure I'm forgetting some)? Everything else was more of a one and done type thing. BCNMs, KSNMs, etc. So it just required a random 6.

I still firmly believe you're better off having large scale events with a challenge, while providing flexibility in the number of players running said event. Rewarding you for several different tiers, but rewarding you even more if you have the army to go further. Can you eventually flip people in and out of statics in XIV? Sure. But, it tends to be towards the end of the contents life. Even then, it's amazing how badly some people interact with one another.